While this Democrat cannot support McCains support for Bush, he can support the idea that pulling out of Iraq without some sort of stability in place would be a disaster of sorts that will haunt our great great grandchildren to their graves.

This world is full of people that would very happily stand upon our chests as they urinate down our throats gasping for air. Removing our troops before Iraq is divided into three sections of peoples that have a chance of coexisting with three seperate identities will result in a calamity of the likes that no one in the modern era has ever seen.

John McCain is twice the man any of the other GOP contenders (pretenders) could ever hope to be. He is correct that a complete withdrawal of our troops from Iraq without a post war plan would be an unmitigated disaster.

Before we remove ourselves from this most retarded folly, we must remedy some of the ethnic strife our invasion created. We must also move beyond the finger pointing of the fact that the war should never have happened, ( every person with an IQ over 45 already understands that). Let some of our best historians and interpreters work to find boundries that could somewhat equate to the ethnic geographical districts that existed before the colonial division of that area. Then an equitable distribution of the areas resources must be contrived. Even this will be an imperfect and non-violent conclusion to Americas worst moment in history but it will be the best solution available for posterity.

Iraq is a disaster, not because of our armed forces but because of their incompetent and arrogant leadership. Should McCain quit apologizing for the man who so slandered and libeled him 7 years ago and outline his own stratagy for this nations future it would become hard for any candidate from any party to outshine him. If he continues to be Bush Lite then he deserves the ignoble end to his distinguished political career that we appear to be witnessing.

I'm with you in my admiration for McCain personally and as a senator. I've never taken a dirty deal harder than the 2000 South Carolina thing. I mean that, really. No election ever hurt my feelings as much. I always knew Bush for what he is. I always knew Jeb and Barbara for who/what they are. A McCain of 2000 vs Gore, that would have been an election.

But he is too old now, and that's all there is to it. His acuity has suffered, as it must. I can't stand, can't stand any of the other republicans, Romney is a legacy robot, Guliani is alpha male ambition in a suit, I could go on. Except for McCain, and in a quirky way Ron Paul, I could make better men out of the dirt in my back yard.

The only way I could vote for a republican this time is...well, I just can't think of one. Maybe if Mc Cain or Ron Paul ran against Hillary. Dems, please, please don't nominate Hillary. She bought, bought bought and she's dynastic dynastic dynastic. Bush Clinton Bush Clinton? no no no no.

otter357,

I sure had higher hopes for this boomer generation, they really let this nation and their parents down.

Not sure who out of all these folks to support and the primaries are about 7 months away.

I find your rejection of Hillary strange as she is acknowledge as being bright, hard working, and politically astute.

She has all of the qualities needed to be president and on top of it all her election would be a direct slap in the face for all of the right wingers who have so screwed up our country both financially and security wise.

How can we accomplish in Iraq what you are suggesting? I used to think we had to fix what we broke there, but at this point I don't see how we can actually physically do it.

It looks like no matter how long we stay there the place may explode when we leave, or they might work things out too. (To quote Rumsfeld, "Who knows?") I don't think it is clear how much our presence there is causing the violence. We have surely given them enough weapons to kill each other for a very long time.

And are we sure if we could do the three state partition Turkey wouldn't invade Kurdistan? If they did, we would be required by NATO agreements to support them. How is that for a Catch 22? And how can we impose that partition on Iraq anyway? What kind of military intervention would that take? Do you support a draft?

I am really sorry that McCain is not what he was, I think Bush broke him in 2000. And I have not heard him address any of the considerations above, he only spouts Bushisms about Iraq. HOW is the question that none of them are trying to answer. We have to actually DO something different, and it will cost us. Nobody is willing to do that, most especially the Republicans. They just want to keep cutting taxes. And strut about pretending to be tough. I don't include McCain in that, but he has no more answers than anyone else, and when they talk about winning, none of them can define what that means in any specific way.

I hear you. I am sticking with McCain, but my enthusiasm is gone. And yea, I remember SC too.

Is it pathetic how people like us want to vote Democratic this time, but the Democrats are about to nominate the one person we (or at least I) cannot vote for?

I agree a division of Iraq would not be easy. Doing the right thing is often hard. Certainly doing what we have been doing has not been the answer. And its my strong personal opinion that simply coming home without a chance of stability in place will be an even worse disaster than we have now.

With regards to our required support of Turkey under NATO agreements; These agreements have been ignored by many nations before. The United States was duty bound by treaties to come to Argentina's defense when Britain went to war there over the Falkland Islands yet we remained neutral.

Interesting thread.... I hope my comments are a worthy addition:

It is not necessary for us to partition Iraq; the constitution we helped draft already divides the nation into semi-independent regions. What is necessary is for the central government to negotiate a division of the oil wealth. Without this, there will be war.

It matters little if this negotiation takes place among "states within a union" or as a treaty between independent states. We should allow the Iraqi people decide this on their own, and we can only hope it is done with some degree of peace under some variation of the constitutional framework under which they are already operating.

We THOUGHT that it would be necessary to hold local elections and bring democracy more uniformly throughout the "states" or "regions". The reality is that some of these areas are defined tribally and are organizing themselves based upon historical practice or tribal traditions.

"Reconciliation", instead of being forced from above through local elected officials, seems to be growing in an organic manner from below.

We should remember that our own democracy started off as a very weak federal government under which the "independent states of the union" largely made and enforced their own laws, paid minimal taxes to the federal government,

Regarding McCain's age and potential infirmaties.... I doubt anyone can look upon the last two presidents and conclude that age or brilliance is anywhere near a sufficient requirement. And you can take that same analysis back through the elder Bush, Jimmy Carter, Ford, Nixon, LBJ and JFK. Every one of these presidencies were very much a mixed bag of good and bad results. Looking back, there was no correlation between asuccessful presidency and either age or supposed intelligence.

Reagan was nearly as old as McCain and had a far narrower view of his objectives. In fact, given the natural inertia of our government and the designed-in checks and balances, the only way for a president to be productive is to focus on a few major objectives and trade-off virtually everything else to get these done.

McCain may well be a good choice if he can find a younger running mate who would be seriously acceptable as president by a large fraction of the voters.

An immediate pullout is obvious insanity. If we leave now, I know it's been said multiple times, but we are condemning Iraq to a full scale riot situation that could go on for weeks, perhaps even months until one group makes a definite takeover. And when that happens, we'll be worse off than with Hussein in power.

No, the only solution is a power sharing deal between Kurds, Shi'ites, and Sunnis. If all three groups want to kill each other, then our goal is to give them enough bearing to create as stable an environment as possible so that no one group can take precedence over another. I think this is one case where the New Jersey plan would fail; if one group has a definite population advantage, we're pretty much going to encourage genocide.

Yes, McCain has been right about tactics in Iraq, but he has not deviated from the neo-cons on strategy. I long to hear McCain clearly say that Iraq was a mistake. It is our mistake and we are responsible, and we must own it. But oh what a foolish mistake invading Iraq was! Please say so John McCain!

Remember the stupidity of the neo-con argument. We would turn Iraq into a Democracy and with Iraq as the model, all of the other corrupt dictatorships would fall because the people of the Muslim world all want to live in countries like Iraq. It is a domino theory. Was there ever anything so hair-brained or unrealistic?

I wonder at what moment the Republican Party abandoned realism for this insane NeoWilsonianism (minus the Leaque of Nations /UN of course)?

I am a life long Republican and feel very far out in the wilderness these days.

WD

What would you think of perhaps a mixed ticket for the first time in our history?

Something about what we are doing needs to change a bit because the current poison in today's politics cannot continue long without even more negative effects in the future.